One of my hobbies is walking battlefields and that will probably be the major source of posts. Plus I will post about other things that spark my interest, from oddities found while researching to observations on the war.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Bragg Reservation - monuments

The Bragg Reservation is nearly smack dab in the middle of Missionary Ridge. I used this as my base point to walk the entire ridge. One day I parked here and walked everything south of here. The next day I walked everything north of here. On the northern end there were a few other places to park that I utilized but to walk the south end this was the best place to park. If you've ever been on the ridge before you know the road is narrow, that the sidewalk is small and the cars tend to go faster than the speed limit. My tip to walk the ridge is not to get an early start, let everyone go to work than traffic will be minimal and you can walk the ridge with ease. You should also do this on a weekday and will need to clear the road by the time people start returning home from work. This does leave plenty of daylight hours unused but you can use those to walk Sherman Reservation or Point Park, or go down to Chickamauga, its not too far away.

Bragg Reservation is near where Bragg had his headquarters during the siege. Truthfully he was not on top of the ridge but this is what was preserved. The marker explaining his headquarters can be seen in this first picture, if you click on it to get the larger version. If you look in front of the car you will see two tablets along the crest, continue to the right and you will see a smaller marker located closer to the ground and that is the Bragg marker. The marker gives a brief order of battle so I did not include a picture of it, its not too exciting. The large monument in this picture is the Illinois monument to her units that were engaged in taking Missionary Ridge. A closer view of the Illinois monument.And the top of the Illinois monument. Looking along the crest of the ridge. The small stone markers are for individual Illinois regiments, marking their place in the line. They are generally from Sheridan's division in this area. The Missouri state monument, for units that fought on both sides.

Its not technically in the Bragg Reservation, just south of there by about 50 feet, but since this was the regiment that my realtive fought in I'm going to include it here. This is the 24th Wisconsin's marker. Time and weather has not been kind to it. First Lieutenant and Adjutant Arthur MacArthur grabbed the colors and lead his regiment to the the crest. According to his son's memoirs (Douglas MacArthur's Reminiscences) Sheridan hugged Arthur and told him he'd just won the Medal of Honor. I've read though that at the time it was believed the Medal of Honor would only be awarded to enlisted men as officers received brevets instead of medals so that story is probably more legend than fact. In 1890 though Arthur would receive a Medal of Honor for this charge. Later his as son would win a Medal of Honor too. My relative, Jacob Goll of Company C, was in this charge, what he did or how close he may have been to the colors is forever unknown.

About Me

I am a Civil War nut. I graduated from the University of Colorado-Denver in 2001 with a BA in History. I'm always searching for more knowledge. I buy a ton of books, though space constraints have limited me of late, and I also download a ton of books. I'm always planning battlefield treks as I think these are important to really understanding a battle. Reading only does so much, walking the fields fills in the rest. And when I'm on a battlefield I really walk it. I like to go someplace and take a week to walk everything, get a feel for everything, and take a ton of pictures.